That response was DevSecOps! DevSecOps was created based on DevOps methodologies and extended to address reliability assurance and code quality issues. In this scenario, when DevOps teams embed security controls early in the SLDC, they can continuously monitor and resolve potential security issues during each iteration, improving both time to market and software quality.
However, DevSecOps hasn’t evolved into an industry standard just yet. But the good news is that 2022 promises to be the year of extensive DevSecOps adoption.
This article will explore six trends that drive DevSecOps evolution and affect its adoption among technology teams and companies in 2022.
Software supply chain attacks continue to be a key driver of DevSecOps adoption. According to a recent study conducted by CrowdStrike, as many as 45% of respondents’ organizations experienced at least one software supply chain attack over the last year (up from 32% in 2018). Even worse, as much as 59% of organizations that fell victim to a software supply chain attack for the first time did not even have a response strategy.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed by enterprises across industries. Business customers now demand transparency into application tools, libraries, and processes the software development team leveraged before introducing them into their trusted cloud environments.
The explosion of supply chain attacks last year also highlights the importance of supply chain security. However, not everyone has done enough to secure software supply chains, and these attacks will continue for the foreseeable future.
In this case, DevSecOps will encourage DevOps teams to concentrate on tools and best practices that help secure the code, software infrastructure, and (now) supply chains. When they shift left and embed security in the code early on, they reduce the attack surface and significantly mitigate the risk of a breach. In this case, the development team can simplify all compliance efforts while substantially cutting down the time to remediation.
Catching potential vulnerabilities and misconfigurations during the SLDC helps save money. This approach also empowers developers to build robust applications securely, reliably, and quickly. As such, the benefits of DevSecOps adoption can’t be ignored.
The need for integrated security measures will drive DevSecOps adoption in 2022. Although testing is part of the DevOps cycle, software development teams often focus on only unit and functional testing.
As integrated security testing gains momentum, we can expect more security tests as part of the testing suite. For example, testing for injections, request forgeries, and much more. As the pandemic accelerated cloud adoption, the threat level is also now higher than ever before.
Today, integrated security testing is critical to organizations shifting left. For example, they must identify and rectify vulnerabilities before deploying applications into production. This approach will also help enhance brand value as end-users won’t have to contend with bugs or potential downtime.
CloudOps enables the efficient management of cloud-hosted applications and the underlying infrastructure. CloudOps essentially allows DevOps teams to validate processes that will implement applications and best practices in the cloud.
As the consumption of resources is highly cost-effective, we can expect the adoption of CloudOps to grow exponentially over the months ahead. Furthermore, enterprises will also release more cloud-based applications and tools that support their implementation.
Organizations following the CloudOps model will be more agile and flexible to adapt to the ever-changing technological landscape. In this case, DevSecOps will help CloudOps teams optimize security, performance monitoring protocols, cloud governance, capacity planning, and much more.
Developer experiences are at the heart of GitOps. This is because Git lets you leverage version control systems and enables the seamless management of infrastructure and configurations.
GitOps best practices, like DevOps, depend on CI/CD pipelines and code reviews to get the most out of them. This approach helps developers automate the entire infrastructure provisioning process. The Git repository will store all the source code and files.
You can also add the same principles to Kubernetes clusters, cloud apps, and server infrastructure. What’s more, GitOps, together with DevSecOps, will make it easier to hold development teams accountable by establishing a single source of truth for them to follow.
For example, DevOps teams have the opportunity to identify and rectify bugs or potential divergences sooner, helping the team shift security further left. Whenever developers leverage this approach, it helps minimize downtimes and accelerates dependable deployments.
As Git is a popular configuration management tool, your deployment teams probably use it already. To support infrastructure as code in the Git repository, all they must do is configure the CI/CD pipeline. The same applies to adding an infrastructure repo into the delivery pipeline.
How DevSecOps works
The shift from massive, inflexible systems that limit compatibility to lightweight, agile software has increased DevOps and DevSecOps adoption. As architectures such as containers become mainstream, it’s now easier than ever for developers to code, debug and deploy software quickly and work collaboratively.
Microservice architecture offers the benefit of quickly installing, running, and maintaining systems and is a catalyst to greater DevOps adoption. Containers, on the other hand, spur DevSecOps adoption.
Zero-day exploits used to occur because of poor code quality and advanced techniques employed by threat actors. However, these days, hackers don’t spend time pouring over lines of code to find flaws or find unpatched vulnerabilities. Instead, they tailor their malware code for it.
So, we can expect more bots looking for disclosed vulnerabilities before the implementation of patches at specific organizations. Until DevSecOps is the norm, we can expect more successful zero-day attacks.
DevSecOps is the best way forward. This is because DevSecOps methodologies consistently strive to improve open-source code management protocols. They can also keep their code clean by leveraging security tools that can automatically scan open-source code for vulnerabilities. Once complete, they can compare it with legitimate and trustworthy vulnerability databases.
By regularly monitoring security updates and conducting inventory checks, DevSecOps teams can keep up with the latest patches and updates to mitigate the risk of zero-day exploitations.
DevSecOps will continue to evolve, pivot, and drive significant digital transformation. This approach will help optimize processes and help businesses achieve their goals much faster.
Our DevSecOps teams collaborate with the Client’s in-house information security team (or team contracted from a third party partner) and DevOps and engineering teams to identify the needs for development solutions and address security issues and potential threats.
Our DevSecOps consultants work with Scrum Masters, Business Analysts, and software developers to facilitate the flow of continuous development through a secure, stable CD/CI pipeline.
CI/CD pipeline bridges the gaps between development and operation teams by enforcing automation of application development, testing and deployment. It allows manual processes to be automated and provides other benefits such as:
In collaboration with DevOps team, DevSecOps covers Security Unit Tests and static application security testing (SAST).
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Delving into the top 10 trends influencing DevSecOps adoption in 2024, each highlighting how security is becoming more integrated, automated, and essential in the SDLC.
